Queer Festival Troubles (opens in new tab)

This essay explores the resilience of the Beijing Queer Film Festival (BJQFF) amid intensified cultural regulation and LGBTQIA+ repression in China. Using insider ethnography and recent scholarship, it contends that the BJQFF’s survival relies not on visibility or institutional expansion, but on adaptive organising strategies, guerilla tactics, decentralisation, and a minoritarian ethic of care. The festival embraces failure as a collective resource, transforming vulnerability into solidarity...